Adding Personality to Your Messages: A Guide to Using ASCII Emojis

Why We Should Use Emojis

Love them or hate them; emojis are fantastic. Not only are they a fun way to add personality to the written word, but they are also helpful in indicating tone and ensuring messages are interpreted correctly. This Key and Peele sketch shows what can happen if texts are misinterpreted.

While a simple =) can suffice; I'm here to dive deep into various ways to make those smilies pop! (◠‿◠)

How To Easily Add an Ascii Emoji to your messages on macOS and iOS.

I don't currently own Android phones or windows computers, so I'll leave it up to you to figure that out!

Text Replacement For Custom Ascii Emojis

On your Apple device, follow these steps:

1 - Open preferences and select 'keyboard.'

2 - Click the 'text' tab

You should see a screen like this (But a lot more empty)

This works because if you type what's on the left, '&adventure,' you get a text replacement for the emoji! As an aside... there are lots of fun ways to mess with people this way. Like if you do a text replacement of 'yes' with 'no' ...every time the user types 'yes', it will be automatically replaced with 'no'!

I prefix every emoji replacement with an ampersand, &, but you are free to do whatever you want. Just know that if you use something you commonly type, it will automatically get replaced with an emoji which you might not always want.

John's Emoji List

(งツ)ว
(°□°)/
(⋟﹏⋞)
Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ
(⌐■_■)
(•̀ᴗ•́)و ̑̑
(ง'̀-'́)ง
ᕙ(⇀‸↼‶)ᕗ
(✿◠‿◠)
︻デ┳═ー
(◠‿◠)
(-_-)
(>‿◠)✌
ˁ˚ᴥ˚ˀ
( •᷄ὤ•᷅)?
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻
┻━┻(°□°)/┻━┻
ง^︠.^︡)ง
(>‿◠)
[¬º-°]¬

Conclusion

Ascii emojis are a unique compliment to personal texts with friends and family and close relationships at work. Use text replacement to pepper them wherever you like! Do you use any ASCII emojis that aren't on the list? Send me a DM, and I'll add them to the list!